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| A Common Looking Street Sign in Lisbon, Portugal. Darrell Resting on His Walking Stick. |
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| A Local and Typical Lunch in Lisbon. About $10. Fish, Beans, Potatoes, other Veg. Delicious! |
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| Portuguese Coffee with Hot Water Added to Make an Americano. |
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| Riding the Hop-On, Hop-Off Bus in Lisbon. |
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| Open Top Tour Bus in Lisbon. |
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| Lisbon Roundabout Seen from the Hop-On Bus Beginning. |
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| Vintage and Old Streetcars in Lisbon Seen from Our Bus. |
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| It's Hot and Darrell Finds Ice Cream! |
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| Our Appetizer at Dinner in Lisbon. All Super Fresh. |
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| Narrow Street in Lisbon. |
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Vintage Streetcar in a Narrow Old Street.
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Saturday. 3. On this day we are looking forward to our flight to the US on Tuesday. We have 3 more full days to enjoy Lisbon. We sleep in, exercise and have breakfast in our apartment. Darrell works on the computer for a while, mainly his weekly blog and ongoing Bible questions with many Kenyans. I do my Duolingo minimal lessons in Spanish. I have some time for prayer and Bible reading. I think about what I want to do today in Lisbon. I want to go to our neighborhood restaurant. We go down there and get an amazing fish meal with vegetables. Thankfully there is a man there, Joseph, who speaks enough English to help us order. He’s 80 years old and sits and visits with us for a few minutes. He was a Marine. He’s never been to the US but he has family who live there. He lived in London for 10 years of his life and learned to speak English well. Now he lives in this neighborhood of apartments. He has two sons and four grandchildren who are near and spends time with them. He tells us he has outlived three wives and has come through a depression of being left alone now. He is so kind to us and willing to visit and share some of his life with us. After lunch we head for the closest subway stop to take us close to the Hop-on Hop-off Bus start. It’s hot and sunny in Lisbon. We wear sunglasses. We carry our walking sticks because there are a lot of ups and downs with the hills here. The pavements are mostly made of mosaics and are uneven from being decades and centuries old. The city seems so clean. The people are friendly and welcoming to tourists. What a lovely day with great architecture and seeing new places and thinking about the bits of history that we can absorb.
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| Pretty and Unique Tiles All Over Lisbon. |
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| A Lisbon View. |
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| A Sardine Festival Vendor. Lisbon in June. |
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| Our Caldo Verde/Green Soup. Darrell Showing the Flat Spoon They Gave Us. We Drank the Soup. |
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| Barbecue Sardines. Very Tasty. |
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| Street Cover. |
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| Sunset View From Our 3rd Floor Apartment in Lisbon. |
Sunday. 4. We decide to do afternoon worship online with our Alabama church. For the morning we take the subway metro to the Hop-on Bus and go to the castle hill. I have discovered that in June there is a fresh sardine festival going on. We arrive up on the hill a bit too early for the lunch time festival start. We have a coffee and pastry and walk around looking at views and reading signs and menus for the festival. We stay around the festival stands until they are opened at noon. We order green soup and 2 barbequed sardines. The soup is a potato base with a little smoked chorizo flavor and fresh greens. It is quite tasty, but they gave us flat wooden throw away spoons that aren’t spoons at all! We end up drinking our soup. The bbq sardines are very delicious but they have a lot of small bones that we are not used to dealing with. We eat our two sardines and then we are finished with our meal. We take our bus back to a subway stop that takes us to the stop about a mile from our apartment. After worship online and communion together, we walk a couple of blocks to an Asian restaurant. We get good soup with protein and veggies for dinner.
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| Darrell Riding the Steep Escalator Up and Out of the Metro at Baixa-Chiado. |
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| We Counted 17 Stories Up to Get to Street Level at Baixa-Chiado Metro Lisbon. |
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| Looking Up at a Lion in the Libon City Building |
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| A Unique Lisbon Sidewalk |
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| Lisbon Architechture |
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| An Old Castle at the End of the Hop-On Hop-Off Route. |
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| Noteable Square in Lisbon. Trees in the Background Surround the Old Castle. |
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| Owen and Darrell Talking about Their Blue Shirts. |
Monday. 5. We spend some time at our apartment in the morning after our routines of exercise and breakfast together. I work on our shared computer for a while doing our recent airbnb review and this diary. Darrell reads his emails as some contain possible pet sits for our New Zealand trip, and he reads some news headlines and articles. We go to our metro, a mile uphill walk, lol!, I can’t forget that! We go one more time on the Hop-on Bus. We take it out to a point along the coast where there is the old tower. There’s a violin player there making beautiful music so that being here is a bigger more remembered event. There’s a restaurant under some shade trees and we go there and have a small lunch. Then we walk back toward the city along the coast. It’s a few miles back to old Lisbon and we eventually find a bus to ride back. Once we are back, I go souvenir shopping and get some dish towels, socks and a tote bag. I’m happy with my buys.
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| Sunrise View from Our Lisbon Apartment |
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| On TAP Airlines and Ready for Our Nine Hour Flight Lisbon to Miami, Florida. |
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| View from Airplane Leaving Lisbon. |
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| View Over The Atlantic Ocean on Our Flight Lisbon to Miami. |
Tuesday. 6. Today we finish up at our apartment, pack our suitcases and backpacks and catch a bus across the street. The bus takes us up a steep hill about a mile to the airport. We arrive and go through the motions of getting through security and finding our airplane gate. Our flight is 9 hours to Miami, Florida. Our seats are comfortable and we were fed two small meals and several drinks of water. We arrive to Miami airport in Eastern Time Zone at 2-3 in the afternoon. For us it’s really 9pm Lisbon time! We’re tired but we have slept some. We find our luggage and then we find the train to the Ft. Lauderdale airport. Our flight is supposed to get us to Dallas, Texas by 10pm. We have some not smooth airplane and airport issues, but we get to Dallas.
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| Arrived to Our Denton, Texas Airbnb After 24 Hours of Travel Plus a Hotel Overnight. |
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| View From Our Denton Airbnb of This Mini-Ranch. |
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| Denton Airbnb Living Room and Kitchen. |
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| Hallway Leading to Two Bedrooms, a Bathroom and a Storage Closet in Our Denton Airbnb. |
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| Our Airbnb Bedroom and Darrell's Legs Resting Horizontally After Long Travel. |
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| Familiar Landmark in Downtown Denton, Texas. |
Wednesday. 7. We finally get to a Dallas airport hotel by midnight Central Time and into bed. Ahhh… It’s now like 7am Lisbon time. We sleep in until 7am Central Time. Then we get up and take an Uber to Cyndy’s house where our truck is near Denton. Yay! We made it back and we are super tired. We visit with Darrell’s sister, her daughter Kylee and his mom and dad. We go get groceries on our way to our airbnb that is 6 miles from here. We unpack at our little house and take a nap. We fix our own dinner (fish tacos) and meet in Denton for evening Bible class. I review names as I reintroduce myself to the people there. We were here in early March and have been here at other times. We know each other better and better each time. Our airbnb is beautiful and comfortable. It’s a small house near a larger house on a mini-ranch. It’s super clean and there is plenty of storage for all of our things.
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| Darrell's Classic Pancake Breakfast at Our Denton Airbnb. |
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| View from Our Airbnb in Denton, Texas. |
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| A Quick Picture at Cyndy's House. Darrell's Mom, Shirley (89) looks on as Her Granddaughters are Having a Good-bye Hug. Kaytie Stopped by with Her Boyfriend Ronaldo as They are on Their Way Back to Colorado Where They are Both in Grad School. Kylie is Her Little Sister Who is In High School. Cyndy's Breakfast Muffins are on the Island. |
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| We Stopped at this Mexican Grocery in Denton. |
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| The Mexican Grocery Serves Up Lunch. We Had to Work at Trying Out Our Spanish. We Wanted to Have More Words for Questions, but We are Still Very Basic. The Food Looks Beautiful and Smells Great! |
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| My Lunch Stew. About $10. Loads of Veggies with Beef Pot Roast. Enjoyable. |
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| Darrell's Taco Lunch. |
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| Beautiful Sunset Sky at our Denton Airbnb. |
Thursday. 8. We rested extra today. We had dinner at Cyndy’s and time for visiting.
Friday. 9. We did a bunch of computer work today. We also went to an evening party with people from church. While there, I enjoyed getting some life stories of some of the people we were having dinner with.
Nomad Notes. I looked forward to our return to the US. We hadn't flown in an airplane for over a year, and the nine hour flight with a follow on connecting flight made us very tired. We were comfortable enough, but I think this day of flying will tint our future flying plans.
We enjoyed shopping in the US and having our pre-done grocery list really helps us get through the grocery store. Our Denton airbnb is very comfortable. It is hot humid weather here in Texas, and good air conditioning is essential as well as a lot of hydration. Our bed is comfortable and we have a lot of closet space to unload our truck and spread out.
We have reconnected with Darrell's folks who live with their daughter Cyndy. Cyndy's third daughter is in High School and still lives at home too. We were here in March and left our truck in Cyndy's driveway until our return now. It all has worked out well. We are into our 2nd year of Retired Nomad living and each trip is unique with unique challenges. Our family members, in this case Cyndy, have been so helpful and supportive for us. It makes leaving our truck for weeks and months easier for us.
Being tired is a recurring theme. I am asked if I get tired of traveling. Yes. I get tired. Darrell gets tired. We remember getting tired living in our house that we owned until September 2020. I have learned to pay attention to my tiredness. I have learned how to rest and how to be more patient, I hope that I'm more patient. It's a very conscious effort when tiredness is overwhelming and there is an unfamiliar landscape to explore or to survive in. In the most intense tired moments for myself or for Darrell it helps to remember that I'm tired. It's important for me to sit or put my feet up for a while. Drinking water and finding fresh food is also important. Earthy local foods and mini-meals satisfy me more than pastries. Pastries are tempting and look good but I know that they don't feel as good to me and I still remind myself of this. Sometimes pastries are all I can find, and I say thanks to God for what I have. Sometimes pastries are what I want and I can't find a good one! lol!
Ultimately I want delicious nourishment and days that are paced without wearing me or Darrell to a frazzle. We have experienced a variety of travel, living itenerently, and being tourists. We think about what fits us and what we enjoy. Often we agree and compliment each other in our travel style. When we disagree we are able to make compromises to suit each of us within our current travel plan.
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